


No promises, no lies

by AThenaAgron



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 02:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1208638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AThenaAgron/pseuds/AThenaAgron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver's thoughts when Felicity asked him to "promise" her he would come back from an impending fight with Cyrus Gold. Inspired by a scene in "Three Ghosts"</p>
            </blockquote>





	No promises, no lies

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS/WARNINGS: Up to Episode 9 of Season 2
> 
> AUTHOR’S NOTES: I wanted to see if I could put into words what Oliver might have been been thinking during the “Promise me” scene in the basement. Just something short and quick. Feedback is much appreciated.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: Oliver Queen and company belong to DC Comics.

All he needed to do was nod.  
  
Or say two words.  
  
"I promise."  
  
But he couldn’t lie.  
  
Not to her.  
  
Not this time.  
  
Not when it mattered.  
  
Strange, because their partnership had started with a ridiculous lie about a bullet-riddled laptop and a coffee shop in a bad neighborhood.  
  
A lie he’d made up on the spot, tossing aside a well-rehearsed — and completely logical — excuse for seeking her out. Because he’d been charmed by her unfiltered reaction to his simple introduction. She had called it babble. True, but it had been honest.  
  
Honesty was a trait he and a lot of the people around him had been seriously lacking.  
  
So he had lied to her. Outrageously. To see what she would do.  
  
The head tilt had almost cracked him up. That simple movement had been infused with equal parts incredulity, exasperation and resignation that he had broken into a smile, his first honest-to-goodness display of amusement in years. He’d known then that she would always respond to him with honesty.  
  
And so he’d gone back to her again and again after that.  
  
To research “a friend,” who turned out to be a foreman in his dad’s old factory.  
  
To trace a custom-made arrow left by an enemy.  
  
To hack a security company involved in armored-car heists.  
  
To analyze the recipe of a new and deadly recreational drug.  
  
She knew he’d been lying, of course. It had all been there on her face. In the eye rolls she had barely hid. In the twitch of her lips, as if she hadn’t known whether to laugh or grimace over his tall tales. But she’d played his game anyway.  
  
Amid the untruths and half-truths, they had, improbably, learned to trust each other.  
  
She’d trusted him about her work with his stepfather and the list.  
  
And on the night his mother shot him, he’d trusted her not only with his identity but with his very life.  
  
On that night, the lies had finally stopped.  
  
He had no intention of starting them again.  
  
And so tonight when she asked him to promise her that he’d come back, he couldn’t speak.  
  
He couldn’t make a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.  
  
Not to her.  
  
His bright light.  
  
His conscience.  
  
The only person uncorrupted by lies in his life.  
  
His Felicity.

**The end**


End file.
